


Asylum

by diabolica



Series: Safe Places [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22406323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diabolica/pseuds/diabolica
Summary: When he said, ‘Come in,’ she could have kissed him.
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks
Series: Safe Places [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612486
Kudos: 4





	Asylum

**Author's Note:**

> For my darling Annuscka, with many thanks to AmyLouise for looking this over.

When he said, ‘Come in,’ she could have kissed him. Instead, Andromeda hung back, guarded; blinking back the tears that prickled in her eyes when she thought he would turn her away. He turned and headed for the kitchenette. 

The flat smelt of manky carpets and too many bachelors; she’d not been round to open the windows. She wondered where Teddy’s flatmates were. Without looking at her, he gestured to the tiny, Formica-topped table, with its two chairs. She took advantage of the fact that his back was turned to cast a quiet _Scourgify_ over her seat before she sat down and delicately stacked the dirty plates in the table's far corner. He opened and closed the cupboards without removing anything before remembering to put the kettle on to boil. 

He must be furious, she thought, because he wasn't saying a word and wouldn’t look directly at her. Andromeda didn't speak either for a long moment, but only because she didn't know how to tell him how sorry she was.

‘Teddy—’ she began.

'I still don't understand what you're doing here,' he said to the sink. He was leaning on locked arms, hands gripping the edge of the basin. The electric light obscured his profile. Her eyes traced the path cut by his triceps, followed it up under the sleeve of his t-shirt. Her face felt hot. When she didn’t respond right away, he shook his head and continued what he was doing.

He had set out a teapot but couldn't seem to find the lid for it. She couldn't stand watching him fumble about any longer. Ignoring the reproach in his posture, she said, ‘Here, let me.’ 

Gently, she summoned the teapot lid and was amazed when it rolled out from under the ice box. Then she remembered who she was dealing with, and her amazement vanished. She rinsed the dust from the lid in the sink, but couldn’t find a towel to dry it with. Ted stepped back, observing her, and did not help.

She considered how to tell him. On her way here, Andromeda had been so focussed on what had just transpired that she hadn't actually considered what she would say when she saw Teddy. She wasn't even sure he would be here, and for a long dreadful moment before he answered her knock, she even wondered whether he had moved. It had been weeks since they'd been in contact, and the one time she'd managed to get a letter out of the house, after bribing Cissy to let her use her owl, Teddy hadn't replied. But she'd put that down to the fact that he had no owl now, because of her—she still felt guilty—never thinking until this moment that he might have changed his mind. 

Taking a pair of tea bags from his hand, she said, ‘I’m here because I've left them, and I'm not going back.’ She hoped that sounded braver than she felt.

‘What?’ asked Ted. 

She almost said, ‘Don't you mean “pardon”?’—but he might not get the joke (_Don't give me that classist bullshit_, he'd say, surely), and she didn't want to put him in a worse mood. She added boiling water to the pot and floated the teabags—_bags_, honestly—across its surface, then placed the lid on the pot. She shook her still-wet hands over the sink.

Finally, she asked, ‘Have you got a tea towel?’

He flicked his wand and said, ‘_Accio_ towel.’ A bit of blue cloth emerged from the washroom down the passage and landed in his hand. He sniffed it and said, ‘I think it’s clean.’ Sheepishly, with his lopsided little-boy grin, he handed her the towel.

Andromeda burst out laughing. After a moment, Teddy joined her.

When the spell passed, she looked him in the eye as she dried her hands. ‘I'm not going back to that madhouse. I mean it, Teddy. I've had it.’

She waited for the smile to reappear on his face, but he was staring at her as if he couldn't believe what she'd just said. As if they hadn't talked about it—endlessly. And now she'd finally found the courage to do it. She'd expected him to be pleased, to hug her or kiss her soundly or take her to bed, but he was acting like he'd already given up. 

‘You really did it?’

‘Yeah.’

The adrenaline rush of telling her father what she really thought was starting to fade, and all she wanted was to sit down. Damping down her confusion, she began looking for cups.

‘Why now?’ he asked. 

There was a clean one in the cupboard, but the others were ranged round the sink. She chose one with nothing in it and cleaned it with a spell. This wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for; she could feel her courage deserting her.

She poured the tea and said, ‘I just felt it was time.’ 

That was the truth, certainly, if not all of it.


End file.
